Press Releases

Shelby County (Memphis), Tennessee, historically set cash bail in criminal cases without stopping to ask whether people would be able to bail out. This practice unnecessarily detained people who could not afford to pay for release, but who would otherwise return to court and live peacefully in their communities. The ACLU Criminal Law Reform Project negotiated a historic settlement with Shelby County to end this practice. In retaliation, the Tennessee legislature passed HB 1719, which prohibits judges from considering an arrestee’s ability to pay when setting bail. This law is unprecedented. Our lawsuit seeks to enjoin Shelby County officials from enforcing it.

The American Civil Liberties Union, Democracy Forward, and the ACLU of the District of Columbia sued the Trump administration over the president’s unlawful and unprecedented invocation of the Alien Enemies Act. The Alien Enemies Act, passed in 1798, is a wartime authority providing that the president may — after a public proclamation — apprehend, restrain, and remove citizens of a foreign country that is engaged in a “declared war” or “invasion or predatory incursion” against the United States. The lawsuit charges that President Trump's invocation of a centuries-old wartime act unlawfully during peacetime to accelerate mass deportations, sidestepping the limits of this wartime authority and the procedures and protections in immigration law. The Alien Enemies Act’s previous use during wartime — for example, its invocation during World War II to justify the internment of people of Japanese ancestry — has correctly drawn sustained criticism. Employing it as a way to evade domestic laws in peacetime is fundamentally wrong.

The Trump administration just put millions of students’ education and civil rights at risk by closing key Department of Education offices and firing half of its workforce.